‘s best netbook resides in a gray area somewhere above PDAs and slightly below full blown laptops. Initially sporting 7” screens and limited processing power, today’s best netbook is almost the equivalent of fully equipped laptops. Their niche in the marketplace is for lightweight, extremely portable and long-lasting computing.
Every person who has lugged around a large laptop with extra battery and power cord knows the benefits that a tiny, sub 3 pound netbook can provide. The best manufacturers include some, well-known names like Samsung, HP, Dell, and Acer as well as lesser known producers like MSI and Asus.
The secret to these lightweight netbooks is their incorporation of the Intel® Atom™ and AMD processors. These battery sipping processors provide sufficient computing speed at a fraction of the power consumption of their dual and quad core counterparts. Low power means longer battery life, lower weight (smaller battery), and cooler operation. A cheap netbook is an easy sell to road warriors tired of carrying heavy laptops and running out of battery life at the airport or on a plane. Once you travel for a day and use a netbook for 8+ hours on battery, you are hooked.
Today’s best netbook has a 11.6 or 12.1″ HD WXGA LED-backlit displays (1366 x 768-pixel resolution with a 16:9 aspect ratio), full size keyboards, 2GB of DDR2 SDRAM, 250GB SATA Hard Drive, Digital Media Card Readers, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n), Bluetooth, Webcams, and 6 or 8-cell Li-ion batteries that provide up to 10+ hours of portable computing. Today, the best selling netbook has a 10″ diagonal screen, 1GB of SDRAM, 6 cell batteries, 802.11b/g, 160GB hard drive,
Windows 7 64bit, 7+ hours of operation, and weighs
in well under 3 lbs.
Many companies are designing next generation 12” and 13” screen size versions and, while most run Windows Starter [some still run XP (some Linux)], it looks like Microsoft
Windows 7 will be the eventual dominant operating system (unless Google is able to take substantial marketshare with its Chrome/Android netbook operating system).
Windows 7 runs very well (better than Microsoft Vista) on today’s laptops and is offered widely. We highly recommend upgrading to
Windows 7 Home or Premium from Starter.
Today’s best netbook manufacturers are Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Dell,
Office 2007 Professional, and even manufacturers like Sylvania. Asus is seen as a pioneer as it introduced the Eee PC series very early. Asus continues to produce an extensive variety of the EeePC family and leads netbook reviews with processor, screen size, and battery life introductions. Another early participant was MSI with their MSI Wind netbook. Acer has recently introduced many pf the best netbook variants and, as a major computer and laptop manufacturer, some really cheap netbook deals come from Acer.
Other leading netbook manufacturers like HP,
Office Professional 2007, Dell, Toshiba,
Microsoft Office Standard, Samsung, and Sony have more limited offerings and tend to be priced a bit higher. HP is said to have the best keyboard (although new models from Samsung,
Office Pro 2007 Key, Toshiba and Acer will contest this), Sony has the smallest netbook, while Samsung, Dell, Toshiba are known for their netbook reliability while Samsung, Acer, Toshiba and Asus are known for long battery life. In , these manufacturers lead the market with the best selections incorporating the latest technology.
We take an in-depth look at all the best netbooks and share our opinions on their pluses and minuses so you are able to choose the best netbook available.